Friday, 25 September 2009

‘Kell’s Legend’ – Andy Remic (Angry Robot)

What with one thing and another, life has been pretty full on right now and I’ve been finding myself wanting to get into some comfort reading. You know the stuff I mean, a book that doesn’t ask too much of you other than to sit back and enjoy the ride. Fantasy is my thing and comfort reading here generally tends to involve guys bashing the hell out of each other with big swords. Think Robert E. Howard’s ‘Conan’ tales or Gemmell’s ‘Drenai’ books and you won’t go too far wrong :o) Comfort reads are re-reads more often than not; at least that’s what I thought until I came across Andy Remic’s ‘Kell’s Legend’. Here’s an author who’s acknowledged Gemmell’s influence on his work and he’s just gone and written a book crammed full of guys bashing the hell out of each other with big swords... ‘Kell’s Legend’ sounded like just the book I was after.Having finished ‘Kell’s Legend’ last night, I’m not sure that it was the comfort read that I was after but it was still a lot of fun to read...

‘They came from the North, and the city fell...’

The land of Falanor has been invaded by the Army of Iron, brutal albinos doing the bidding of their Vachine masters (vampires augmented by clockwork) in the far north. The King must be warned and Kell (a hero of the empire) and a small group of people are tasked with the job. The way south is blocked by the Army of Iron, the monstrous Harvesters and hybrid Cankers; Kell and his friends must fight their way past them all if the invasion stands any chance of being turned back. The true darkness though is that which lies within the soul of Kell himself. His travelling companions will come to discover that Kell is no hero at all...

‘Kell’s Legend’ is a roller coaster ride of a book that grabbed me right from the first page and tore off at a rate of knots like I hadn’t seen in a long time. The only chance anyone gets to take a breather is when Kell removes his axe from a corpse that hasn’t had the time to realise that it’s dead! Before you’ve had a chance to take a proper breath, it’s back into the fray again. A lot rides on Kell’s mission and Remic stacks the odds accordingly. The outcome of each encounter is never in doubt and this can make these situations come across as a little cartoonish; Kell is very much the ‘ultimate warrior’ and this is well established early on, maybe the reader doesn’t need to be told quite so often...

To be fair though, I was never short of a tense moment or exciting scene whilst reading ‘Kell’s Legend’; the book is set up to deliver these one after the other and it does this in style! The pages turn easily and it’s definitely one of those books where you’ll be surprised at how many pages you read in a sitting. It isn’t a comfort read though; Remic sets out to shock his readers with his language and the amount of sheer gore that his characters must wade through. It’s laid on a little too thick though and is very obviously there to shock. It does little for the story itself other than to get in the way at the wrong times...

Before ‘Kell’s Legend’ even begins, Remic dedicates his work to David Gemmell and Gemmell’s influence is obvious as the story progresses. Maybe this influence is a little too obvious. Kell’s axe is possessed, in the same way as Druss’, and I couldn’t quite believe that Remic would go so far as to have Kell address people as ‘laddie’... Saark is also cast very much in the same mould as Druss’ companion Sieben. Paying homage is cool but not to point where it smothers the story itself...

When Remic moves away from his homage to Gemmell, Kell becomes a far more interesting character. Here is a man who has become a hero yet knows full well that he has done nothing to deserve such accolades. In fact, he has done entirely the opposite and is ready to commit the worst atrocities to protect what he loves. Life has eaten all the best bits of this man and left nothing but bitterness behind. Again, Kell’s less salubrious qualities are laid on so thick as to render him almost cartoonish but he remains an interesting character to follow and I’m looking forward to seeing what the future holds for him.

You may feel that you’ve read ‘Kell’s Legend’ before (with a different title) but it’s still a lot of fun to read, one that has made my morning commutes go a lot faster. I’ll be around to see what happens next.